MIKE HAD BEEN OPERATIONAL for exactly two years when he reported for the second night duty of that tour. At 20 years of age, he was not considered a big bloke, nor was he overly athletic. He weighed in at 11 stone 2 pounds and had a 32-inch waist line. On parade, that November evening, he was detailed to ride the pump-escape and designated as the station’s dutyman. This North London fire station, once in the former Middlesex Fire Brigade, still received its fire calls via telephone from the control room at Wembley. The Sub Officer rode in charge of the PE and Station Officer Vic rode the pump. With the normal appliance routines completed, and after a cup of tea, the guvnor left the Sub Officer to take the watch for evening drills. It was an uneventful evening. No fire calls– what firemen call ‘shouts’ – until that call.

It was a bitterly cold night. Snow had already started to fall by the late evening. No one went to bed at the designated time, although, like all older fire stations, firemen had put down their army-style fold-away beds after supper anywhere they could find a space. The station had no dormitory and there was a definite pecking order on who had the best bed spaces. As the watch’s ‘junior buck’, the 20-year-old found himself at the bottom of the list. All had to sleep using the Brigade-issue blankets (horrible scratchy things) since the guvnor did not allow any personal sleeping bags on the station. It was one of his many foibles. Most of the watch slept in their overall trousers and a tee shirt. It ensured a quick response when the ‘bells went down’. But being the operator of the control room – or, as London stations call it, ‘watchroom’ – his bed space was secure in the station control room that night. As the station control room operator, it was his duty to answer any calls from the Wembley control room, write down the call details on a special form and actuate the dispatch lights which would inform the other firemen which fire engine(s) were going out.

At 2.24 a.m. his light sleep was shattered by the bells going down and the automatic house lights coming on all around the station. He leapt from his bed and was at the watchroom switchboard within a second. With pen in one hand and switchboard phone in the other, flicking switches, he listened intently to the control officer. He wrote down the address and the route card reference. The station’s pump-escape and pump were ordered to a fire at 168 Cricklewood Lane, NW2. Switching on the two-coloured appliance dispatch lights, red and green, in the appliance room, he let the crews know that both machines were being ordered. He heard the wooden appliance bay doors crash open as the two drivers waited impatiently on their appliances, revving the engines up. Handing an ordering slip first to the Sub Officer, together with a route card, he repeated the process with Station Officer Culwick before young Mike climbed into the rear of the PE.

As the drivers drove out of the station the cold night air hit them. There was a thick covering of snow all around. The call was to the far side of their stations ground, almost into West Hampstead’s patch. The drive took five to six minutes; because of the snow, the fire engine drivers were careful to maintain control of the machines. When they entered Crickelwood Lane, the PE was still in front, the pump a safe distance behind it. As the PE cleared a long and slow right hand bend it was the Sub Officer and the driver who first witnessed the unfolding drama in the near distance.

Then, in his short career, the young fireman saw a sight most firemen speak of yet many hope they will never see. It was a dire fire situation. People were screaming for their lives. They were trapped in the burning, three-storey, terraced building. It was a combined shop and dwellings. Its occupants were desperate to be rescued. Coming from the opposite direction, with different weather conditions, the supporting station’s fire engine had arrived at the incident seconds ahead of Willesden’s own two machines. Their crew had dismounted and were running to slip their 50-foot wheeled escape ladder before extending it to the top floor window. A window where people were shrieking for help. Acrid, thick, angry, smoke was forcing its way from the windows of the property. Fierce flames were shooting into the street from the lower levels.

Before his PE had stopped he had jumped to the ground. He knew his task was securing a supply of water so that an immediate attack on the fire could commence in concert with the attempts to save these people’s lives. Grabbing the hydrant equipment from its locker he ran to the nearest water hydrant which was just slightly to the left, and in front, of the property on fire.

The building involved was a café, its accommodation above. It was some 25 feet wide and went back about 70 feet deep. As he ran to connect a standpipe to the hydrant, about ten feet from it, the ground floor suddenly exploded into a ball of fire. It seemed the entire building was engulfed in searing flames. The fire in the ground floor café had flashed over. What had already been a serious incident escalated in those few seconds to a desperately dangerous one. Flames, like a plumber’s blowtorch, roared across the pavement. The resultant fireball rose up over the roof of the house. The flames were so fierce that they burned the side of the other fire engine that had, in all the urgency, been parked too close to the front of the building. The heat was so severe that it first scorched, and was now setting alight, the wooden wheeled escape ladder which had been pitched to the upper floors. The pump operator of the supporting fire engine had a miraculous escape; he barely avoided being severely burnt, as the resultant flash-over almost consumed him while he operated the side-mounted pump controls. The force of the explosion knocked our young fireman over. He dropped the hydrant equipment and was forced to back away because of the severity of the heat. Shielding his face with raised arms he looked up to where a moment ago people had been. Now there was nothing to be seen except a wall of flame.

Why he did what he did next he still has no idea. He had never witnessed anything like it before. He was given no instruction: gut instinct drove him to do what he did. He ran back towards his own station’s pump. Skidding on the snow, he stopped at the pump’s rear cab and, jumping up into the cab. he grabbed a Proto oxygen breathing apparatus set. The pump’s driver, senior fireman Brian Hudson, seeing the young fireman’s obvious intentions, screamed at him:

“No Mike!”

Brian had never shouted so intently. But the young fireman was not listening. Dispensing with all the starting-up and booking-in procedures required for the breathing apparatus he threw the set over his shoulders, stuffed the mouthpiece into his mouth and turned on the set’s main valve. In his haste he chose not to secure the set to his body nor fit the mouthpiece to his head harness. As he ran towards the burning escape ladder he put the BA goggles over his eyes and placed the nose clip on his nose. With a long push of the by-pass valve, which inflated the set’s breathing bag, he drew in through the mouthpiece the first breaths of pure oxygen.

Another fireman had already got a jet to work using the one-hundred-gallon water tank supply. The young fireman barked out his instructions, instructions that were muffled by his mouthpiece. He shouted for the man on the jet to extinguish the flames on the escape ladder and to try and hold back the fire. He climbed the escape ladder at speed. The fireman on the jet looked on in disbelief but complied with the shouted command as the fireman on the ladder rapidly rose higher.

He felt the effects of the blistering heat as he ascended the burning ladder. He also felt the spray of cold water on his neck and hands as the fireman below sprayed him and tried his best to keep the flames at bay. Nearing the top of the ladder the flames enveloped his whole body but the fireman below relieved the situation by carefully directing his jet. He managed to keep the flames away from his mess-mate climbing the ladder above him.

He reached the top floor window sill. It was where he had last seen those pleading so desperately for help. The heat rising from below was intense. In fact, he thought he might not be able to endure it. But he was determined to get into that room. So, taking a leg lock on the ladder, he first used his axe and attempted to cut away the window frame and enter the room. He failed. Within the first couple of blows of his axe he knew he was not making any impression on the wooden frame. He had no choice but to get into the room using the restricted window opening. The head of the escape ladder had been extended into the narrow open window. The top of the ladder was taking up most of the available space closest to the window sill.

This was the very space where, only moments before, those inside the room had been shouting frantically for rescue. He managed to twist his body around on the top of the ladder and, somehow, entered through the window opening feet first. As he forced himself through the gap his fire helmet was knocked off his head and fell into the street below. He wriggled and forced himself through the restricted opening, his feet feeling for the floor. He felt the unconscious figures right under the window. He had no option but to stand on them in order to get into the room.

He realised, as he entered the room, that his time in there would be very limited. The temperature was intense. He was starting to cook. But then, why would he not? The room was like a ruddy oven! The floors below him were ablaze. Already, at the back of his mind, doubt was creeping in. How could anyone possibly survive in such conditions without breathing apparatus? The temperature was like nothing the young fireman had ever experienced. It sapped his strength. His fears were starting to grow: a fear that said if he did not leave the room right now, he might never get out at all – alive, that is. Suddenly he felt very alone. It was an overwhelming sense of duty that made him stay.

He bent down to the two figures at his feet. He found a limb and started to lift. The first body felt very heavy as he attempted to lift it towards window sill. The seconds were turning into minutes. Each time he seemed to get the unconscious casualty up onto the sill, the body slipped back down to the floor. He could not keep it in the right position as the exposed skin had become greasy from the heat and smoke. He changed his grip in order to lift it higher, but the dead weight proved too much. Once again it fell to the floor. He grasped the ladder in a last determined attempt to give himself more purchase when he felt another fireman’s hand grab his own.

He took the offered hand and directed it towards the casualty he was trying to lift. Now as he lifted the other fireman knew what he was trying to do and pulled from the outside. The fireman at the top of the ladder was joined by Brain Hudson wearing his breathing apparatus set. They took terrible punishment from the heat and smoke pouring out from the windows below. However, between them they were able to get the first unconscious person out through the window and onto the shoulders of one Brian Hudson, who started to descend the ladder. Others on the ladder were assisting, preventing the fireman performing the rescue from falling. The difficult process of getting the first casualty down the ladder prevented others, wearing breathing apparatus, from getting up and joining in the search and rescues.

With the first, unfortunate, soul hurriedly cleared from the base of the ladder a fireman, wearing BA, raced up the ladder to try and enter the room. However, inside the room the second casualty was already being lifted and passed out through the window opening. The top of the ladder was like a log-jam. Those wanting to get in had no alternative but to accept the next casualty and start another difficult descent. Below, meanwhile, a breathing apparatus crew from his own station were getting increasingly anxious. They were desperate to get into the room to help their young colleague, knowing what he was doing required an entire crew. However, they were unable to help him because of the casualties being brought out of the window and down the escape ladder. The firemen working on the escape ladder were shielded by covering jets of water. Whilst this prevented the actual flames from getting to them, they still had to contend with the severe heat and smoke which continued to envelope them in powerful waves.

Back inside the top floor room small pockets of fire had broken out. Mike could see the glow of the flames through the smoke. He sensed that this was the only room in the building not to have flashed over. He realised that the fire was still raging beneath him. He could hear the flames consuming anything that burned. He had visions of the floor giving way beneath his feet, pitching him into the inferno below. It was then he found a third unconscious soul, a child. Those in the room craving rescue had been breathing in the hot gases mixed with the smoke. It clearly must have burnt their throats as their laboured breathing and the guttural sounds made for a sickening noise. Carefully lifting the child, he carried he body back to the window where he placed it on the shoulders of a waiting fireman.

He thought he could not take much more of this punishment. It was time for him to get out. He had already rescued three people and was feeling exhausted. His decision to leave the room changed when he thought he could hear more strangulated breathing sounds coming from within the room. He knew he could not leave now, so continued to search. On hands and knees, he crawled through the debris covering the floor. He felt the worrying rising temperature coming off the floor. The smoke was now so thick that he could not see a hand in front of his face.

On the far side of the room, he found two more unconscious people. Both were large individuals and he was running on empty. He did not have the strength to move them unaided. Crawling back to the window he removed his mouthpiece and shouted down,

“Two more are still in here.”

Although he could see nothing below but the smoke, he heard the huge gasp and cry of awe from below. It came from the large crowd who had gathered to watch. They had cheered each time a rescue was performed by the firemen. Returning to the bodies he thought;

 “I really do need some bloody help in here.”

“I really do need some bloody help in here.”

Although the crowd could see the rescues they could not appreciate that this public display of professionalism was no mean feat of strength or skill by the firemen, whether in the room or on the escape ladder. To them, standing in the safety of the street, it all looked very exciting. But to lift a dead weight, pass it through a restricted space, then onto the shoulders of a fireman, who was struggling to stay balanced on the 50-foot ladder whilst manoeuvring an unconscious person onto their shoulders, tested these men to their limit. The firemen directly below their colleague, as he carried the casualty, assisted as much as they could. But all were taking huge punishment from the smoke and heat from a fire still burning beneath them.

With the fourth rescue taking place on the ladder the pair inside returned to the fifth person. However, when they returned to the window there was no fireman waiting to receive the casualty. They were recovering people faster than they could be carried down the ladder. There was no alternative: they had to carry the person down themselves. So, exhausted, the young fireman climbed out of the window and stood at the top of the ladder. His colleague lifted the casualty and assisted in getting it across his shoulders. It was only with great difficulty that the two achieved the task. With the ladder still occupied by the fireman carrying down the fourth person, no one could ascend the ladder to assist in helping him carry the fifth person down.

As Mike started to carry this heavy burden down the ladder every step down tested his resolve. He started to feel light-headed. Then he felt the reassuring hands of a fireman beneath as he guided his feet onto each rung of the ladder. He had only descended 10 feet or so when his exhaustion made its presence known. He knew he was going to fall off the ladder, together with the body he was carrying. His strength had given out. There was nothing left in reserve, he was totally spent.

Spitting out the BA set’s mouthpiece he shouted to the fireman below to grab the casualty. He hoped he might fall from the ladder without taking anyone with him. But the fireman below was having none of it. He shot up the ladder and, with huge force, used his arms to envelope him and the body onto the ladder. The slight respite from the weight he carried allowed Mike to recover slightly. The pair now shared the body’s weight and after some very difficult manoeuvring they continued to carry the limp form to the bottom of the ladder where it was swiftly removed by others.

After the briefest of respites, he re-joined other BA firemen searching the top floor. It was the home station’s Leading Fireman (Keith Wright) who told him that he had been ordered by the Officer in Charge of the fire to leave the room and return outside to ground floor level. In the desperate search for still more bodies, he ignored this order, believing there were still some areas of the room not searched. All three now began a last frantic search of the remainder of the room. It was during this search he realised he was becoming a danger to himself and the others. He could no longer think properly and had not an ounce of strength left. He was very close to passing out.

As he started his descent the firemen already on the ladder had to descend to allow him off. It was as he was stepping off the ladder he collapsed. Willing hands caught him and carried him across the spaghetti of hose to a clear area of pavement where he was laid down to recover whilst an ambulance crew checked him over and administered oxygen. As the breathing apparatus set was being taken off of him Station Officer Culwick came over to him to ask how he was. This wise and accomplished Willesden Station Officer said:

 “For you, young man, this job is over.”

Placed on a stretcher he was carried to the waiting ambulance. He passed numerous fire engines and other ambulances at the scene. So much help had arrived that he was not aware of. Concerned firemen looked his way and gave him a smile and the thumbs-up sign. No further people were found in that room. In the ambulance an attendant started to remove shards of glass from the young fireman’s hands, which were bleeding freely from the cuts from glass that had shattered in the initial explosion. His hands were also blistered from the heat. Alongside him, on the other side of the ambulance, was a man lying on another stretcher. His face was burnt and his hair badly singed. The man sat up and asked;

“Are you the fireman who entered the fire first?” He replied that he was.

The man, clearly in some pain, asked to shake the fireman’s hand and with a strange calmness muttered softly:

“I think you are very brave.”

The man had managed to rescue himself by jumping out of a first-floor window, 15 feet above the ground floor. Another man had rescued himself by climbing down a drainpipe. It later transpired that the young fireman had been in the top floor room for 27 minutes, mostly on his own, searching for and rescuing five people.

He was taken to hospital suffering from heat and smoke exhaustion to be checked over by the duty Accident and Emergency doctor. However, scant attention was paid to the young ‘exhausted’ fireman in the busy A&E Department that fraught morning, as the medical staff fought desperately to save the lives of some of the people who had just been rescued. Two hours later he was released; collected by a senior officer, he was delivered back to Willesden fire station.

As he sheepishly entered the mess room, he was greeted by big smiles from all the watch. He informed Station Officer Culwick that he had been discharged and was fit to continue his duties. Not a man to be overcome with emotion, the guvnor told the returnee he should get back onto the machine he had been detailed to ride at roll call – and with that, he was back in the ‘box’. Nothing more was said of the incident. They all just sat and drank tea, looking at each other, smiling through their blackened faces. They were filthy, smelt of fire debris, smoke and grime. Their work overalls were soaking and soiled. Zilch was said as to what had just happened only a few hours before. It was beyond anything any of them had ever experienced before. Nobody knew where to begin or what to say. After washing, and a change of clothes, they drifted slowly back to their beds where most just lay on top of their blankets, unable to sleep.

Returning to his bed in the station control room, his mind was a whirl of thoughts and emotions. He could not sleep either. Each time he closed his eyes a vivid memory of the fire flashed across his mind and he was forced to open them again. (In fact, these flashbacks went on for many weeks afterwards before he was able to return to a good sleep pattern, free of harrowing images.) In the next hour Willesden’s station bells summoned both machines to another incident. During the search of the premises, where a fire was reported, the security guard complained that the crews stank of fire and smoke. One of the firemen replied:

“We had a bit of a fire earlier mate.”

The others just looked at him and smiled. It was something of an understatement. That was the last call of their shift. They all left the station that morning for their two rota leave days.

Parade on their next first day duty was normal. At 9 a.m. the firemen were detailed as to their riding positions for that day. After the appliances and equipment were checked, and other normal procedures carried out, the young fireman was ordered to report to the station office. As he knocked and entered the office he was immediately ordered to stand to attention. He stood in front of an unexpected array of officers, both his own and the off-going watch officers. His guvnor set about giving him the biggest bollocking of his short career. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that he had broken nearly every rule in BA procedures and had endangered himself in the process. With a ferocity that was making some of the others standing there quake, the Station Officer continued that if he ever caught him doing anything like that again he would be charged under the Fire Service’s discipline code and would likely be sacked. By the time the Station Officer had finished this verbal assault the 20-year-old fireman was visibly wilting under this quite unexpected onslaught.

The Station Officer then stood up from his chair and moved swiftly from behind his desk. His stern face suddenly broke into the widest of smiles as he came towards the pale-faced young fireman. He offered his hand, then, changing his mind, he moved closer and enveloped him in a huge friendly hug. He looked at his ‘junior buck’ and said:

“In all my considerable years your actions were the single most heroic act he had ever seen. I am very proud to have you as a crew member on my watch.”

He ended by saying he was going submitting a report and was going to recommend him, and others, for bravery awards. The other officers then came over to him. Each shook his hand as they warmly congratulated him. As he left the station office he was in a daze. Privately, he wondered why there was such a fuss about what he done. He felt sure plenty of others would have done the same.

The word was also now out on the ‘wire’. Word that this watch had had a ‘fair’ old job and did ‘some’ rescues. Those on Willesden’s other watches bitterly regretted missing the sort of job that was only seen very rarely in the fire brigade. On ‘shouts’, firemen he had never met before would ask to shake his hand and say that they had heard of what he had done. He was very humbled to be treated in this way, especially by those he knew were far more experienced firemen (and officers) than himself.

It was later in that tour the watch held its own debrief on that fire. It was the guvnor’s way that after a proper ‘job’ they would sit down and learn from each other. They listened to each man to get an understanding of the whole job. It was only then that the young fireman discovered that simultaneously to his rescues the Sub Officer had led a crew into the front door of the building, only to find an inferno raging. With a jet of water, he had led the crew, none of whom was wearing breathing apparatus. They fought their way up a collapsing staircase whilst attempting to extinguish the fire as they went. Moving into the first-floor accommodation, at the rear of the building and after a search, they had rescued two more people whilst taking a huge amount of physical punishment in the process.

It transpired that nine people were in the building at the start of the fire. They were in various letting rooms on the first and mezzanine floors and in the family accommodation on the second floor. In addition to the two people who had rescued themselves, one of whom had spoken to the young fireman in the ambulance, seven people were rescued by the brigade. Three of them died later in hospital, two from the top floor and one from the first floor.

Epilogue.

Years later, and after his promotion to Leading Fireman and now on another fire station, our hero was informed that the police wished to interview him again about the Northwood fire. During the interview, where he had to make a formal police statement, the incident in the ambulance seemed of special importance to the police. He asked the detective Inspector about its significance. He was informed that the man who accompanied him in that ambulance had set fire to the café in Northwood and many other places over the subsequent years. He was responsible for the deaths of eight people in total. Finally caught, he confessed to his many arson attacks. The man was due to appear at the Old Bailey. He was subsequently found unfit to plead and was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Broadmoor Hospital, a prison for the criminally insane.

Fireman Michael Wallman and Fireman Brian Hudson (Willesden), Fireman Alan Fosbrook (West Hampstead) and Fireman Alan Cox (Hendon) were each awarded a Chief Officer’s Commendation for their actions when five people were rescued from a fire at Cricklewood Lane, North West London in November 1969. Three of the five people survived. Fireman Michael Wallman was subsequently awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for Gallantry.

(Based on the recollections of those who attended the incident.)